Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie this week has been making higher education his main focus. Yesterday he held an event on the topic at The College of New Jersey (and heavily dependent on Twitter) headlined by former Gov. Tom Kean. He’s continuing today, with events at Raritan Valley Community College and Burlington County College.

At yesterday’s stop, Christie and running mate Kim Guadagno took the wraps off what the campaign’s calling its Stopping The Brain Drain: Connecting Higher Education With New Industry plan. It seems to be recurring theme for Christie to present his entire platform by linking it with the economy, as he’d made a similar point earlier with his alternative energy agenda.

Democrats have been quick with the rapid response. Yesterday, the Democratic State Committee organized a noisy rally that greeted Christie upon his arrival at the Ewing college campus, and Assemblyman Albert Coutinho joined the two dozen students to highlight Christie’s hesitancy to accept stimulus dollars with strings attached, saying such a stance would have cost the state $74 million in federal student aid. Sen. Loretta Weinberg, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, made a similar stimulus-focused argument about transportation funding at stop in Garfield. And today at Burlington County College in Mount Laurel, Assemblyman Louis Greenwald is scheduled to discuss the role of New Jersey’s community colleges in job growth and job creation.

Here are Christie’s specific plans regarding higher education:

Meet with all state college, university and community college presidents on a regular basis, including a meeting of the President’s Council once each semester.

Make the executive director of the Commission on Higher Education the governor’s higher-education adviser and give him or her a seat at all Cabinet meetings.

Reinstate the Higher Education Incentive Endowment Program eliminated in Gov. Jon Corzine’s first budget. The program provided state matching funds for endowment contributions of at least $1 million at a rate of 10 percent a year, to encourage major private gifts. Christie says the program would not be fully restored in his first year but pledged “to restore some of this funding” over four years.

Create a new “Outstanding Scholars” program providing public and private institutions with campus based funding to recruit top New Jersey students, as measured by class ranks and SAT scores.

Provide and expand mentoring and tutoring through the New Jersey Educational Opportunity Fund to help urban minority students complete their college degrees, providing each student personalized counsel and tracking their progress.

Add two college presidents to the economic development New Jersey Partnership For Action, which will include a “Putting New Jersey Back to Work” program focused on retraining unemployed workers at community colleges to connect them with businesses looking for specific skills.

Provide public colleges, universities and community colleges grants for curriculum and training to prepare workers for jobs in the wind and solar industry.

Offer challenge grants to colleges with existing teaching certification programs to encourage development and implementation of new training and professional development programs.